Castel Del Monte Park Hotel Bari

As it turns out, filling that day wasn't so much of a problem.... we tootled out of town, found a beach, wandered about & looked at the boats; tootled back, found somewhere to eat, had a chat with a few Brits and - hey presto! - before you knew it, time for bed! But the one on board was a bit more of a challenge... all 13 hours of it! BIG ...

... will recall the story from the cold open of the show's first episode. Echoes and connections between Homicide, the non-fictional account of journalist David Simon's year spent tagging along with the Baltimore Police Homicide squads, and the HBO TV series he went onto create abound. McNulty's overweight sergeant, Jay Landsman, is named and modeled after the real life sergeant of the same name, who makes small ...

... down for the night. Some people were sleeping on the deck. There was a pool, which people were using already and a Ala carte restaurant and a Self service one. Dan and I got a drink and claimed a seating area and a few other found us until we had 8 chairs or so. We were almost too afraid to get up in fear of losing them! We went in shifts to have dinner at the self service restaurant. We went around 7.30pm and had tortelli ...

... the coastal resorts in August - the idea of travelling somewhere quiet and undiscovered was very appealing.
We passed very few cars on the journey to Matera, which was actually rather refreshing having spent last summer trying to get away from the over-crowded tourist resorts.

As the road headed up to the mountains, we passed ancient hilltop towns and villages clinging to rocky limestone plateaus. Often seeming more Greek ...

... 15 hour boat ride.

We boarded the ferry and set off. Of course on our grocery run we bought some beer and wine, so we began the drinking on the top deck. After a while we had quite the crew: the Australian couple, the 3 Spokane guys, and then 4 Irish lads. We stayed up late drinking and talking under the stars...it was pretty cool.

Then we went to bed. On this ferry ...

... we get to customs where there's complete disorder. Then we see the road ways. I've never seen so much disorder in my life.

Last nights rest on the boat was awesome. We wanted to get some sort of cabin, but all were full and we were forced to be deck passengers. There were a lot of us and most everyone crowded into a lounge and attempted to make beds out of dining booths. Chrissy and I were the only ones to set up our sleep mats ...

... at Americans like we're in a zoo or something. Not good. After a long day of shopping, and eating more gelato, we decided to head back to the hotel because we were exhausted. When our professor had dropped us off, he told us to take bus number 4. We walked all over to find it, and we couldn't. We were standing there arguing when we heard, "Can we help you?" We were SOO excited to hear english!! It turns out it was 2 guys in there 20s who were missionaries originally from ...

... sippin our very strong liquer, eating chocolate and telling stories with the girls. We finally left the deck around 3am, then ran into some people from Norway and chatted with them for another half hour before we claimed our spots on the floor in the reclining seat lounge. Yes we slept on the floor, but only for about 3 hours before we were woken up. The cigarette smaoke was so bad in the area that we decided to give up on sleep and went back tot he deck to ...

... the food itself. I got pasty with red stuff in it. Tomato? Meat? Cheese? Who could tell? Amy and the kids stuck with popcorn. An experiment with vodka tonics went badly wrong with the addition of Soviet-surplus gin. At 9:45 we were told to get in line for our ferry. The Hemphills were near the end of a line of thin, dark folks who fixed us with direct, not especially friendly ...

... the food just kept coming. You don't order, they just bring you things; wine, foccacia, bruschetta, olives, pizza, gelato, cookies, and finally amero, a bitter Italian liquor. We had no idea how much anything cost, but the total was a whopping 15 euros. We could write about this for another 1000 words or so but computer access would cost more than the meal. Ok, this is the official end of the Bari entry. "Dov'e il gabinetto" (where is the toilet) Shi and Gabe